VII.
NEW YORK.
LEAVING HOME.
Incessant exertion in teaching and writing, added to
pecuniary anxieties and domestic cares, had so exhausted
Margaret's energy, in 1844, that she felt a craving for
fresh interests, and resolved to seek an entire change of
scene amid freer fields of action.
‘The tax on my mind is such,’ she writes, ‘and I am so unwell, that I can scarcely keep up the spring of my spirits, and sometimes fear that I cannot go through with the engagements of the winter. But I have never stopped yet in fulfilling what I have undertaken, and hope I shall not be compelled to now. How farcical seems the preparation needed to gain a few moments’ life; yet just so the plant works all the year round for a few days’ flower.’
But in brighter mood she says, again: — ‘I congratulate myself that I persisted, against every persuasion, in doing all I could last winter; for now I am and shall be free from debt, and I look on the position of debtor with a dread worthy of some respectable Dutch burgemaster. My little plans for others, too, have succeeded; our small household is well arranged, and all goes smoothly as a wheel turns round. Mother, moreover, has learned not to be over-anxious when I suffer,
